During her long trial, whenever a shadowy doubt had crept into her sight, she had slain it. Always he had been her martyr, and she had been ready, in fierce resentment, to turn upon those who would have cast the slightest reflection upon his fame. He, the idol of her young life, her first love, had suffered through misfortune, through an ugly turn of fate, and she had gone on waiting for the day when he would be cleared.
In that spirit, she had crossed the wide ocean, bearing with her his freedom, as she believed; and now, after fighting a year against the terrible disillusions that had been showing Robert Hallam in his true light, the veil that she had so obstinately held was rent in twain, torn away for ever. By his own confession, the husband of her love was a despicable thief; and as she realised how she had been made his accomplice in bringing over the fruits of his theft, the blow seemed now greater than she could bear, the future one terrible void.
Volume Four—Chapter Six.
The Shadow across the Path.
What to do? How to bear it? How far she—woman of purest thought—had sinned in participating as she had in Hallam’s crime?
It was as if the shock had blunted and confused her understanding, so that she could not think clearly or make out any plan for her future proceeding. And all the time she was haunted as by a great horror.
Now light would come, and she would seem to see her course clearly and wonder that she should have hesitated before. It was all so simple. Sir Gordon was there in Sydney, her oldest friend. He it was who had been the sufferer by her husband’s defalcations, and of course it was her duty to go straight to him and tell him all.
No sooner had she arrived at this than she shrank from the idea with horror. What could she have been thinking! To go to Sir Gordon was to denounce her husband as a criminal, and the result would be to send him back to the prison lines and the hideous convict life that had changed him from a man of refinement to a brutal sensualist, from whom in future she felt that she must shrink with horror.